(English version on the Bottom)
Metáforas
Bruxólico é
um vídeo jogo + livro ilustrado feito com o coração, e não é nenhum “fast food”.
Sei que posso estar falando o óbvio, mas é preciso falar e desenvolver mais
algumas palavras a este respeito.
Amaweks
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Metaphors
Bruxólico is a video game + illustrated book
made with heart, and it's not "fast food". I know I might be stating the obvious,
but it's important to explain and expand upon this.
It's made with my heart, as well as my brain and guts, because it's made by a craftsman, not in a factory. Not on a market assembly line, by workers alienated from the final product or the entire production process, as Marx explained well. It's not based on market trends, because if it depended on it this work wouldn't exist. It doesn't exist solely for the financial return that I much need to survive as an artist, but if it came, it wouldn't even come close to paying for the eight months of full-time work I dedicated to this project, and none of this is a surprise or novelty to me.
And it's precisely because of the above that this work of art, in the form of a video game and also a book, is not "fast food". It's not for quick consumption, but it's to be appreciated within a certain amount of time. For those who create video games, it can be a bit distressing, but I know it will take some effort for more people to truly discover what Bruxólico is about, and for it to have the impact I hope for in the world. But it's also not a "Big Mac" because it has many layers from its conception to production, and especially because it's inspired by the work of Cascaes, Peninha, and other artists and popular culture here in the Island of Desterro. And this reminds me of how much Cascaes is still underestimated, even among the few people who know something about his work, forcing me to say a few more things on teh subject.
Let's be honest, there are people who think that Cascaes was a "simpleton". Just because he chose folklore and the customs of the poor and disconnected from the modernity of industrial and urban capitalism as the object of his study and creation, they believed he must also be "naive". This is what many of the "rich" and powerful, but also some of our scholars, think. They couldn't be more wrong. To begin with, Cascaes was a technical drawing teacher, and before producing the drawings we know, he made various experimental studies exploring different graphic styles, spanning different periods of art history. Finally, he concluded that the representations of these stories could not be done with mathematical perspective or a realistic style, but with an "intuitive perxpective", or "multiple perspective drawing". Through his studies, he surely concluded that if the drawings were "photo-realistic", they would certainly lose much of the symbolism and metaphors that they needed to preserve from their source material: popular culture.
I have a good example to ilustrate something about the symbolismo of folk culture: at what age did you realize that the story of "Little Red Riding Hood" was more than just a children's fable? All the "Bedtime Stories" or "Mother Goose Tales" originated in medieval Europe and are loaded with double meanings and messages that relate to people's way of life in that time and geographic space. Gradually, the message is re-elaborated, and especially the metaphorical references are removed or modified, as happened in the compilation of these stories in the 18th and 19th centuries, and more recently even more so with Disney adaptations.
The more I get to know, and there is still much to know about the work of Cascaes and Peninha, the clearer it becomes to me how they were articulating language in a critical and tuned way to their time. Cascaes made criticisms of the predatory real estate exploitation on the Island, and this is well known and represented in the drawing titled "The Big Witch", which represents this creature with legs made of buildings, stepping on and destroying the old houses and ways of life of the people who lived here, while excreting money. Or even in "Witchlish Election", with the creatures holding a rope that connects and ties them, holding each other down. Not to mention all the more subtle and subconscious symbolism in the forms and details in the images, which are difficult to perceive in these reproductions we have on the internet, remembering that some of the original drawings are large, very large, roughly equivalent to size A2.
I imagine that in other images Cascaes could even be mocking specific figures, in the style of Dante Alighieri when he places his detractors in specific places in Hell and Purgatory depending on their sins in life. At times, I get the feeling that some figures may even be autobiographical, which I also feel in some of Peninha's drawings. José Gelci Coelho, more than a disciple of Cascaes, which was already quite a bit, an artist with a work still to be preserved and known. Or, as Luiz Souza said in Anacronia Magazine Nº1, the "Electric Boitatá", the missing link between Cascaes' tradition and the counterculture of the 60s.
Peninha has fantastic drawings, and I was only able to see a part of his collection before he passed away. Among these, there is a series of Boitatás and M'boitatas, and I find it interesting how they dialogue with questions of sensuality. I could also see something of Peninha there, almost as if some of those Boitatás were an expression of what he felt at the moment of creation. To not drag on, I will leave two images of these drawings in the sequence, the first entitled "Boitatá assanhado e a pedra sensual" (horny Boitatá and the sensual stone), and the second "A serpente e a sereia" (the serpent and the mermaid), which he showed us and told a story, or invented (was there a difference for Peninha?), that I reinterpreted in Bruxólico, about the Mists of Peris Lagoon.
With such rich sources of inspiration, just to give a few examples, I also needed to work on the layers of reading in Bruxólico, and thus honor the masters. Without beating around the bush, the witches are not just witches, and the well is not just a well. The metaphors in Bruxólico can very well serve for the social and political ills we have experienced in recent years, from the imperialist political coups throughout Latin America to the rise of fascist far-right in the capitalist world (not by coincidence, for those who know something of history).
Yes, Bruxólico is there for anyone who wants to play and read my work to create their own conclusions and analogies. Just keep in mind that there is something more there than a video game in its most vulgar sense, and that neither Cascaes, Peninha, popular culture, nor my work are so naive or simplistic. That's the tip.
Amaweks
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